Episode 1: The Good Cop

Examined: The Backfire Effect

On November 5, 1986, a gunshot in the parking lot of St. Clair County Community College in Port Huron, Michigan, killed student Scott Macklem.

Key takeaways

• Initial confusion among witnesses caused delays in recognizing the crime scene, with many dismissing the gunshot as mundane.

Main topics

• The murder of Scott Macklem at St. Clair County Community College
• Witness testimony and initial misinterpretation of the gunshot

Notable quotes

"You know, we didn't even discuss it. Oh, a car backfiring." – Witness Kathy

Conclusion

The episode sets up a deep dive into how initial perceptions, misinterpretations, and

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:00) This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human. In Speaker 7 (0:04) February of 2024, celebrated illustrator and children's book author Petra Mathers and her husband Michael mailed letters to dozens of friends and family members to let them know they had died by suicide. Speaker 4 (0:15) Dear honeys, this is goodbye. By the time you get this letter, both Petra and I will be dead. Next stop, Wonderland. Speaker 7 (0:24) Why did they do it? And what did it do to the people they left behind? Listen to Death of an Artist wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 2 (0:41) Pushkin. Speaker 2 (0:49) Depending on how old you are, maybe you've never heard the sound of a car backfiring. That's what happens when a little bit of gasoline reaches the exhaust system and then suddenly ignites. These days, cars don't backfire that much, but that used to happen all the time. You'd be in a parking lot somewhere, and the loud bang would startle you. Speaker 2 (1:13) That's why, on the morning of November 5th, 1986, when a loud crack whipped through the cold air, people nearby didn't think much of it. Speaker 4 (1:24) You know, we didn't even discuss it. Oh, a car backfired. There was no discussion. Speaker 5 (1:28) I could have swore that I heard a back... It sounded like a car backfiring as I pulled into the parking lot. Speaker 1 (1:35) You know, I remember the noise. Speaker 5 (1:38) Which, by the way, wasn't unusual. Speaker 2 (1:40) Those voices are some of the people who were in the area that day. Max, Kathy, and Sherry. They, and a few others, were in the parking lot of the St. Clair County Community College in Port Huron, Michigan. Some were students. Some were employees. All were unaware that they were about to take on a new identity. Witness. Speaker 2 (2:06) This is where our story starts, in the easternmost city in Michigan, spitting distance from Ontario, Canada. Port Huron lives near the intersection of Lake Huron and the St. Clair River, and a few blocks from the waterfront sits St. Clair County Community College, or SC4, as the locals call it. Speaker 4 (2:28) The St. Clair County Community College is spread over an attractive 26-acre campus in central Port Huron. Speaker 2 (2:36) That was a clip from a very 1980s promotional video. Downtown Port Huron is pretty, with the low-slung brick buildings and the Christmas lights at night. But on the morning of November 5th, 1986, it was gray and chilly and dreary, a layer of clouds coating the sky. Speaker 2 (2:56) The parking lot of SC-4 was full. Most students were already in class, but there were a handful of struggling kids. They were adults, technically, sure, but really just kids, falling in lockstep with their friends, a bunch of 18-, 19-, 20-year-olds, who heard not a car, but a gunshot. Speaker 4 (3:17) You don't expect to hear a shotgun blast in downtown Port Huron when you're walking through the college parking lot. You just don't expect that. Speaker 2 (3:27) The gunshot that no one realized was a gunshot was the first thing people did not, could not recognize. But there were other things, too. Like the scream. I'll Speaker 4 (3:39) tell you what I vividly remember. I heard the gunshot. And then I heard curdling screams. And I froze. Speaker 2 (3:55) Sharon was on her way to work at SC4 that day. Speaker 4 (3:59) In my head, I'm thinking, I don't know what I was thinking. Like it couldn't be real. I proceeded. I went on into the college. There was another student, do not know who he was, and I just made a comment about, oh my God, I hope someone was just screwing around out there, but that sounded so real. All he said was, you're not dead. Speaker 2 (4:30) This whole series of events probably has taken me longer to describe than it occurred in the moment. A couple of minutes, max. But that one moment would still haunt these witnesses, and many others in Port Huron, almost 40 years later. I'm Josie Duffy Rice, and this is The Backfire Effect. Episode 1, The Good Cop. Speaker 2 (5:24) I'm not from Michigan. I'm from Georgia. I'm a journalist, and I used to be a lawyer. And in both careers, I focused almost exclusively on the criminal legal system. The story I'm going to tell you, the one that has been rattling around in my brain for a couple of years now, that has taken up thousands of hours of my mental real estate, the story that I've honestly wanted to shake just to loosen its grip on me a little bit, is not the kind of story I usually tell. But it grabbed a hold of me. There's a man in prison right now who maybe shouldn't be there. And he's a complicated man. A brilliant man. A strange man. A man unlike anyone I've ever met before. But I'm getting ahead of myself. On November 5th, 1986, there was the backfire. There was the scream. But as it turns out, the scream didn't really set off alarm bells either. Kathy later told authorities that it did not sound like a yell that a person would make if they were in trouble. Wanda and Jean both saw something weird after they heard it. Wanda, quote, saw a man bend over and grab himself. Then he ran between two cars. She thought he was joking, so she headed to horticulture class. Jean heard someone cry, help me, heard him say, oh God, I'm hurt. She apparently said that she saw a man, quote, walking by his vehicle in a crouched over position, but felt in her mind that this was just one of the college students putting on some sort of act. So she, too, just went inside. A number of witnesses would later tell investigators about another strange thing. A person wearing a red nylon ski jacket lying next to a car. Most of them just assumed it was someone working on their vehicle, but not an 18-year-old student named Max. His story would be different. And Speaker 5 (7:32) I was late that day, so I was in a rush. I was surprised that there was a parking spot that close to the main buildings. You know what I mean? Like that being late, usually. The Speaker 2 (7:44) parking spot that Max found was right next to a Plymouth Therese Mill. I Speaker 5 (7:49) pulled in, grabbed my books. As I walked past, I remember seeing legs hanging out from under the car. Speaker 5 (8:06) up and said, you know, hey, you know, you need any help? He didn't respond. And so I kind of edged up along the side of the car and said, hey, you okay? And then I heard kind of a, I heard a moan. And so then I kind of came up to the front of the car there and he was lying on the ground there. Speaker 2 (8:28) Max would later learn the man on the ground was a student named Scott Macklem. And as Max tried to help him, he realized that Scott had been shot. Another student sees Max trying to turn Scott's body over. Speaker 5 (8:42) I just remember looking at him and I remember saying, go across the street to the fire department and get help. And this was before cell phones and, you know, all of that and everything. So he actually had to run across the street. Speaker 2 (8:55) Max tried to do what he could to keep the victim alive, using his clothes to pack the wound. But it was a losing battle. Speaker 5 (9:03) I remember taking off my jacket and stuffing it in